4 ways to tackle ocean trash besides Ocean Cleanup’s broken system

Author: Laurel Hamers / Source: Science News

BEACHCOMBER BOOTY Picking up trash that washes ashore prevents it from floating back out at high tide. This pile of discarded fishing gear and other debris was collected along remote Alaskan shorelines.

Cleaning up ocean pollution is no simple task, as an effort to fish plastic out of the Pacific Ocean is revealing.

In September, scientists launched a 600-meter-long boom meant to herd plastic debris from the great Pacific garbage patch into a net (SN Online: 9/7/18). The trash accumulation, which is twice the size of Texas, swirls in waters between California and Hawaii.

But some scientists worry the system, designed by a Dutch organization called Ocean Cleanup, could harm marine wildlife. Others aren’t convinced it will even work. Four months in, some of those concerns appear to be founded: Wind and currents have pushed trash into the rig, but the setup hasn’t kept the trash corralled as planned. Now part of the rig has broken off, and the device is being towed back to shore for repairs and design tweaks.

Whether the system will eventually help remove garbage from the Pacific remains to be seen. But it’s not the only option for reducing how much plastic is dumped in the oceans — now at some 5 trillion pieces, per some estimates. Here are a few other approaches seeing success.

1. Meet Mr. Trash Wheel and friends

It’s easier to collect trash from rivers and streams than from the open ocean. Baltimore has deployed three giant waterwheels that trap river plastic before it flows into the harbor.

The first installation, adorned with googly eyes and dubbed Mr.

Trash Wheel, debuted in 2014, followed by Professor Trash Wheel in 2016 and Captain Trash Wheel in 2018. Collectively, the wheels so far have removed more than 680,000 kilograms of trash.

Mr. Trash Wheel wasn’t immediately successful, though, says Adam Lindquist, director of Baltimore’s Healthy Harbor Initiative. A waterwheel installed in 2008 didn’t work well. He suggests that the Ocean Cleanup group, in tweaking its device, could also see improvements — though clearing plastic from the ocean is certainly a bigger job than cleaning a river, he says.